Trucking Along... VMWare

I've slain a bunch of dragons in the past few weeks. Quite happy with that.

But many others evade me.

One is VMWare's USB 2.0 support, apparently not. The menu states that WorkStation 5.0 series do not support USB 2.0, but I am on WS 6.5.1. Going to tools offers no solution for upgrading, and Googling has not helped so far...

As a result I cannot connect the Nokia E90 nor the Olympus DS-61 to Windows 2000 running on VMWare WS 6.5.1 on Linux SuSE 11.1.

I'm sure we shall figure it out eventually.

The Cat Sat on the Hat - SuSE 11.1 & KDE 4.x

Well, not on the hat. But he did sit on the keyboard. I haven't a clue what magic combination of keys he triggered, but whatever, it was a doozy. The video settings were trashed, as was OpenOffice and several other things. So after numerous attempts to "upgrade", restart, re-this, re-that, I bit the bullet, reformatted the partition and started the installation from scratch.

This time it has installed KDE 4.1.9 and OpenOffice 3.0.1. Both, especially the former, are a delight.

KDE 4.1.9 has the touted "Folder View" working nicely. It took me a while to Google and figure out how to show the desktop icons. The key is to right click on the desktop, choose Desktop Settings and then examine the options in the Desktop Activity > Type options. (Yes, I know, this is not intuitive). The first two choices are Default Desktop and Desktop without ... (there is more but it disappears off the screen). The third is Folder View. Apply this and all your icons reappear.

Once past all that Plasma is a delight:

* Run your cursor to the upper left hand corner of the screen and you get a tiled miniaturization of all open windows showing the actual contents of each, making choosing the one you want much easier than using icon recognition (what is that funny little triangle with the exclamation point...). You just look at the window and know.

* Are you wondering what's underneath your current window? Just click the title bar at the top and hold or move the window. It turns partly transparent, showing whatever is underneath.

Also, delighted to see Input Actions (aka KHotKeys) have returned. I've really missed those.

So, much improved over earlier versions. I still haven't found how to turn back on the button for recent documents on the Start menu. They have Recently installed, but no Recent Documents. But I'm sure I'll eventually figure it out, prolly by adding an icon...

As for OpenOffice.org 3.0.1, it just generally seems much more complete, smooth, and professional. I'm mostly a Calc guy so have focused there. They have fixed some glitches and given it a new, more professional look.

Initial installation resulted in v. 3.0.0.9, but having read about 3.0.1 I updated the repositories and "upgraded" the components. This went alright, except that there were a number of conflicts between 3.0.0.9 and 3.0.1 components, so I finally just totally uninstalled 3.0.0.9 and clicked one box - OpenOffice.org - in YaST to install 3.0.1. This went flawlessly, but only installed Calc and Math. So I returned and only clicked four boxes: Writer, Impress, Draw, QuickStart. Again, no problems.

So I figure all those hard working folks have figured out the dependencies, I'll just let them decide what I need to install, instead of crawling through pages and pages of options myself.

Minimalism is a good thing.

So it seems that as, cited by an earlier commenter, the problems were with KDE and other apps and not with SuSE itself. OTOH, the packagers need to temper their desire to get the latest and greatest and not knowingly package buggy software in a release, at least not without some warning.

But, whatevah, I'm a much happier camper now.

SuSE 11.1 - too little, too soon

I'm an engineer, so I like to read the instructions and do my homework before I come to a conclusion. So I have given SuSE 11.1 due diligence. I have spent at least a day with each of the problem areas, some with success, others without. As a result I have come to the following conclusion:

• SuSE 11.1 is very pretty. The Plasma desktop is beautiful.
• SuSE 11.1 is a very pretty bimbo. There are a lot of things that just don't work.

As my father said to my sister, "pretty is as pretty does." The SuSE people have obviously spent a lot of time on facepaint, but under that pretty face is a very disfunctional brain. Let me count the ways:

• Bluetooth does not work on KDE. http://en.opensuse.org/Bluetooth gives the summary. http://forums.opensuse.org/hardware/402244-bluetooth-solution-opensuse-11-1-a.html gives the workaround as installing the gnome bluetooth package, but it only works if you have Gnome as the desktop. On KDE bluetooth does not even appear in YaST, although hcitool does show it exists and it can find remote and local devices. You just cannot assign a password to the local device, so you cannot connect. As a result there is a host of other things that do not work, including:
  • obexfs
  • syncml
  • Bluetooth modem
• GIMP 2.6.2 scanner support does not work. xscanimage cannot find the scanner even though skanlite and scanimage find the device. We can live with this since skanlite can save a scan to a file that we can then open in GIMP.
• Audio does not work. We spent hours farkling this.There is a troubleshooting guide for SuSE 11.1 system at http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Intel-HDA_sound_problems but I have been through this in detail without success.
• File previews in konqueror do not work. The new Plasma interface lets you select or deselect a file by clicking on the icon, but despite settings in Personal Settings you do not get the popup preview with size, date, ownership data.
• The system will not shut down except by brute force power-off. See http://forum.soft32.com/linux/SuSE-11-Novell-bring-windows-98-code-Linux-ftopict474479.html
• khotkeys does not work. As a result I have lost all my quick inputs of the complex passwords we have to use.
• Beagle is a dog. Duhhh. But it really is. It spends hours thrashing about, but when you ask it something it plays dumb. So why am I wasting all that disk space? So I nuked it.
• The SuSE firewall is a dog. No visible means of configuration unless you have memorized iptables. Thanks be to God for guarddog:
• http://www.simonzone.com/software/guarddog/
  
• There is no support for mplayer, even though this is the dominant open source media player. I had to revert to learning svn (a step beyond CVS and full of flamers) to get it to work, and the kplayer GUI still doesn't work.
• The default SeaMonkey email system is definitely a work in progress. I went with it for a week and then trashed it to return to Thunderbird.

SO: pretty well disappointed.

• Note that:
  • These conclusions are deliberate. I spent easily a full eight hour day on each of these problems
  • I am a real SuSE fan. I prefer the KDE interface as being bright and cheerful and crisp. Everyone else wants fat dull Gnome. I hate it.
  • I'm a certified engineer and geek, so quite adept, and moreso than most, at farkling these problems.
  • And, most importantly, all these things worked just fine on SuSE 10.2. So the operative phrase is: If it ain't broke don't fix it!! Good grief...
    

My opinion is that the community at large, and Novell/OpenSuSE in particular, would be better off adhering less rigidly to a six-month release cycle and more rigidly to making sure that very much everything works before making a release. Normal people do not reformat their disks and install a new operating system every six months. 'Way too much work. This evolution has easily cost me two months, which thankfully I had available. I'm not going to do that every six months. And releasing buggy software just gives the community a bad name. So take at least a little more time and ensure that it WORKS before releasing it. Especially do not release stuff that the community has already identified as being dysfunctional, like bluetooth on KDE4.

So, despite being a SuSE fan from 10.2 onward, I shall catch my breath, and then try to figure out how to get Fedora or something else to give me KDE. And then, maybe, very maybe, come back to try SuSE 11.2 or 11.3 or ... But again, shall do due diligence first.

MPLAYER DOWNLOAD AND INSTALLATION FOR DUMMIES

1. Always try to download mplayer using your distribution's software manager:
| Distro | Manager|
|OpenSuse | YaST |
|Fedora | yum |
|Debian |apt|
|Ubuntu | ~|

If these fail then add the "packman" repository
http://opensuse-community.org/Package_Sources/Packman

(see that page) by issuing the following command as root (all on one line):
zypper addrepo --repo http://packman.mirrors.skynet.be/pub/packman/suse/11.1/Packman.repo

and then try again by asking YaST for mplayer. It should give you a host of modules, select them all and click ACCEPT.

If that fails then the best answer is to use the svn repository. svn is a process ("protocol") for frequently updating the status and files of a software project, such as mplayer. Developers submit daily changes to the component files. The files are accessed by using the program svn, which may already have been installed on your machine by your installation system. Type
svn help
as root at a terminal to determine whether or not it exists, and if not then install it.

Once installed, svn uses a unique internet permissions protocol, called a "port", to access the updated files. Your firewall needs to give permission for the port to be seen and accessed by servers on the internet. Otherwise svn cannot find its target.

"Guarddog" from http://www.simonzone.com/ is an excellent tool to configure your firewall. You can add "ports" in the Advanced tab of the program, then tick the boxes in the Protocol tab for Internet, local and your local network.

Check your results with https://www.grc.com/ (using the ShieldsUp! option) to ensure you have not exposed yourself by opening this port.

Once past all that housekeeping, simply enter the following commands in sequence in a terminal as root:

svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/trunk mplayer
# This will download the main software and most of its dependencies and associated codecs. It will not get ALL of them... :-(

cd /root/mplayer # This moves you to where the files have been downloaded

./configure # This is the normal start of an installation sequence that creates a "makefile" summary of all the files that need to be installed

make # This uses the results of ./configure to compile the program

make install # This installs the program.

Test your result by typing

mplayer

as either user or root.

For the explorers among you, this site seems to say it all:

http://linux.justinhartman.com/FFmpeg,_FFmpeg-PHP,_Lame,_Libogg,_Libvorbis,_FLVtool2,_Mplayer,_Mencoder,_AMR_Installation#Download_all_the_files_needed

If it works, Enjoy!

If it doesn't, then have a nice day. Google is your friend. Consider joining:

"MPlayer usage questions, feature requests, bug reports"

Oh yeh. This is for users of Linux. If you are on some proprietary closed source OS then really have a nice day.

Mindboggling

I cannot believe that a sitting Republican president would even consider this course.

I have been a staunch supporter but this really earns them the DUBYA award. Shame.

Detroit is where it is, as is Wall Street, because of greedy, short-sighted management and workers.

They get what they deserve, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

So CUT THEM OFF!!!

WHAT makes them more deserving than ME???? I have a mortgage on a house, a boat, and a car. Why can't you bail ME out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What imbeciles.

Do you hear what I hear? How about the sound of a new Boston Tea Party?

Get it right.

Shame on them.

A letter to the President and Congress

I have sent the following excerpt from

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122895755096596653.html

to the President and my congressmen (since I doubt they read WSJ.COM)

=========== Open Letter to the President and Congress ===========

PLEASE DO NOT BAIL OUT DETROIT!!!!!!!!!!!

Bankruptcy doesn't make assets disappear.A government bailout of the Big
Three keeps huge amounts of productive inputs in firms that can't use
them efficiently. The bigger the unprofitable firm, the more vital it is
that it be allowed to fail.

If Washington gives no special subsidies to workers and suppliers
outside of the auto industry, why treat GM, Ford and Chrysler
differently? Are their workers or owners more worthy? Not at all.

It is precisely because the Big Three differ in no essential way from
America's other firms that bailing them out runs a real risk of
cascading into a march on Washington by countless firms and individuals
unable to see why they are less entitled to taxpayer funds.

Like ME!!

If you bail them out then bail me out too!!!

Obama and Hillary

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/Politics/story?id=6368280

"Limbaugh called the choice of Clinton "a brilliant stroke by Obama.""

I agree with Rush. A brilliant stroke.

But I also have to recognize that we may be at a tipping point. This stroke effectively emasculates dissension within the Democratic party. Gate's reappointment as SecDef takes strides to do so among Republicans.

Brilliant.

So, if we have a new president who is inclusive and not partisan or sectarian we may have a real statesman who can actually solve problems instead of creating more, as so many before him, especially since Reagan, have done..

If the Democrats have finally come to the realization that they have plundered this Nation for the past 80 years and now are going to work to fix the damage then I am all behind them. Go for it.

Only the inclusiveness that Obama has shown so far will let this happen.